"Fire is motion / Work is repetition / This is my document / We are all all we've done / We are all all we've done / We are all all we've done / We are all all defenses."
sea world: 2. humans: 0. this has not been a good week in the battle between man vs. nature.
an aquarium in the Dubai mall containing 2 million gallons of water and some 33,000 marine animals is beginning to crack. shark attack!
also, last week a 12,000 pound orca whale named Telly "dragged a trainer into the pool by her ponytail" and effectively killed her. in 1999, a man, who snuck past Seaworld security, and "either jumped, fell, or was pulled into the water" also died, possibly from hypothermia, though his body was found "draped" over Telly's head. the Seaworld PR people are now trying to keep blame away from Telly:
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Chuck Tompkins, Sea World’s head of animal training, insisted that the orca was getting a bad rap, saying, “those two incidents really don’t have anything to do with this and to mark him as a killer is very unfair.” [via]
damn right it's unfair! look, we're talking about a giant swimming KILLING MACHINE. have we forgotten that orca whales, in nature (where they NATURALLY BELONG) are huge, swift, powerful, blood-thirsty BEASTS who hunt BABY SEALS and EAT them? i'm guessing these deaths are due to a number of things (like, THEIR MOTHER FUCKING NATURE TO LEAP OUT OF WATER, SOMETIMES THROUGH ICE, TO BITE AND KILL AND EAT THINGS), none of which amount to "revenge," which is what the media is (ridiculously) trying to call it ("there was no reason to believe that the orca had turned on its trainer out of anger").
i'm sorry, but when it comes to animals and humans, i'm almost uncompromisingly pro-fauna. if you put a bunch of fucking SHARKS in a tank with a tunnel thru it in the mother-fucking MALL for the sake of spectacle/thrill/etc. you deserve to lose your shit once that tank starts cracking and leaking water. and if you put an orca whale in a pool, feed it nothing but little fish and expect it to learn tricks for your amusement, you're damned right it's gonna leap out and eat you if you're not looking. it's not revenge, it's poetic justice.
it infuriates me how often the media covers these animal encounter stories and side unequivocally with the humans. i mean, i know it's common practice to be anthropomorphic, but dang, can't we just get over ourselves from time to time and see from another perspective? it seems that for the supposedly "most intelligent" animal, and the only one granted with reason, that we can be extremely unreasonable and myopic. sheeyit.
i watched Avatar with my fam last night. i enjoyed it, really, and maybe one of the most enjoyable facts was how my dad and i became really absorbed in the narrative, [spoiler alert:] cheering on the Na'vi, boo'ing the imperialists/capitalists/US foreign policy surrogates.
for those of you who haven't seen it yet, i would recommend seeing it soon, but mostly because i think the theatre surround sound and giant image add a lot to the experience. if you can, see it at a 3D iMax (which we did not, [my mom and i get motion-sick] but the whole time i wondered what it would be like [probly the closest to tripping on acid i will ever get]).
those of you who can't afford to see it in 3D iMax (esp those of you in CA, where those tickets can cost close to $20!), let me save you some of the suspense: my brother called it cliché, "it had the same gist as The Last Samurai and Dances with Wolves." (mm, not true? i believe in The Last Samurai the "natives," that is, the samurai, actually lose. and i haven't seen Dances, but at least it didn't distort or adulterate a historically significant theme [colonialism vs. "native" culture] with fantastical allegory, at least Dances was explicitly and unequivocally talking about Native Americans... right?)
despite its predictable story arch, Avatar does throw in some delightfully sharp jabs at recent foreign policy, mainly, US adminsitrations' predilection for forgoing diplomacy and resorting to force – quotes such as "fight terror with terror" and "shock and awe" were pulled right from Rumsfeld's mouth, generating huge snickers from me and my dad. (i wonder, too, about how uncomfortable the film might make staunch republicans, Bush fans, FoxNews junkies, Glenn Beck nutsacks, and jingoes, once they get past the colorful images and realize that the film is asking them to cheer against what they believe in. has Glenn Beck seen Avatar and/or done a review yet?)
Avatar, just like Lordof theRings before it, uses the winsome conceit of fantasy to send us a much-needed message about how our modern lives are ruining the beauty of the world around us (indeed, the world without us). Avatar allows us to sink just deep enough into its fantasy to absorb its message, but i wonder if the message gets left behind as soon as we leave the world of Pandora and step out of the darkened movie theatre. as a kid watching the LOTR films, i eagerly took up where Peter Jackson left off, i wanted to be a hobbit and live in a Shire-like community, and i felt that meant we needed to protect our (Middle) Earth better. i started an environmental club at my high school, i got my family to recycle more and waste less. small actions probably, but illustrative. in contrast, leaving the theatre after Avatar made me feel exhilarated, but more in a "wow, what a really awesome movie" kind of way (residual spectacle). later, i felt bitter and angry as my thoughts turned to the surge in Afghanistan (no thoughts about the beauty of earth and nature).
i guess the significant difference between these two comparable films is this: while LOTR grounded its story in something fantastical, it still seemed plausible (warriors who looked like nothing stranger than medieval crusaders, trees who could walk and talk – this doesn't seem so strange if you accept the idea that the natural world is teeming with life and hidden beauty, which i do). Avatar, to use a phrase from the main character, was too "dream-like" to be real. and that's the problem, it is real. wars against native peoples and cultures happen all the time, thru brutal, irreverent force and extermination, and ppl don't see it or don't care. what good does it do for these things to be brought to the surface but to be forgotten in spectacle?
finally, a word about representation: i found it difficult to enjoy the movie for the first half an hour or so, because i was deeply disturbed by the way the "natives" were depicted. long braids, tall alien-like bodies and cat-like features, broken english, scarce clothing, hissing and animal-like agility... it was a biting reminder that our society often thinks of ethnic as "strange" or curious (disturbingly, something about the Na'vis faces, in addition to looking cat-like, suggested that the actors playing them were ethnic, which was what prickled me most ["native" = ethnic, colonialists = "white"] because it suggests that ethnic peoples are somehow wild or alien). for more on what i mean, see this article on what it means to wear "ethnic" fashion. (update! this article from a really great website on representation, picks Avatar apart quite aptly. again, spoiler alert!)
and, for those still wanting to see the movie but without the means to do it, this video sums it up nicely as well:
-stephan!e
edit! found this great image that sums it up pretty nicely:
"When again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let's vote, and not till then."
~ W.E.B. DuBois
i love that quote. after spending the majority of my Spring semester reading about democratic philosophy and theorizing about the meaning of democracy in modern America, looking for hope that the youth of America are becoming more engaged in their communities and are participating in political activity, i feel obligated to watch the democratic debates, even though i LOATHE them.
nevermind that most of it rapidly, inevitably devolves into immature bickering and quibbling, or that they NEVER answer the questions, or that they're always using the same empty rhetoric over and over ("Change" vs. "Experience" - as if they're completely separate and we can only have one!) ...
most of all, i hate the spectacle that politics has become. i gave this debate an honest shot. i took half an hour out of my already really packed day to watch the debate in the hopes i'd find something redeeming in either one of the candidates. because we're voting here in Ohio in less than a week, this undecided independent young adult minority woman (an important demographic, i believe?) needs to decide how to get her vote on!
i've been following the debates and the campaigns, with ever-growing disdain and distaste and disinterest and complete lack of faith in our political system. it was tolerable back when John Edwards was still in it. he was sensible, well-spoken, and miraculously managed to diffuse the awkward tension and animosity between Barack and Hillary. but let's face it, the media machine never even gave him a chance, it's always been Obama vs. Clinton from the beginning. and now look at the mess we're in! it doesn't matter who gets the nomination at this point, they're not going to pick each other as running mates (which leaves... Kucinich? if only...) and all this nonsense mud-slinging is doing nothing to get anyone excited about voting for either of their sorry asses!
this is exactly why youth, across the board, in surveys and polls on civic engagement, continually abstain from political activity. BECAUSE IT'S UGLY! why would we want to participate in a system that continually reeks of corruption, greed, equivocation, and disregard for real issues in the name of competition? i hate having to watch adults - full-blown grown-ups dressed up in power suits fer cryin' out loud! - whining and picking on each other to try to win sympathy from a (let's face it) apathetic crowd. these are our supposed leaders in D.C. and i can't even trust them to sit there and have a civilized, well-reasoned discussion for half an hour?! and you want me to vote for them??!!! i can't even believe i made the foolish mistake of turning on the TV to watch this garbage when i didn't even eat dinner today because i had so much work to do, i was worried leaving my room to grab a sandwich would be too much precious time lost. clearly i don't have any sense of propriety!
not that the idea of political theatre should be news to my generation. no, on the contrary, we should be pros at spotting it now. i'll admit i'm exceedingly suspicious of Obama because of all the media hype he's getting. it's almost trendy to be in support of his campaign. now, i can remember maybe 2 years ago or more hearing about the young junior senator from Chicago who was a great orator, and being kinda excited. but after that the spark faded. and when Hillary brought up his inclination to vote "present" on bills, rather than taking a side, that really turned me off. i want stances, not easy passes. and i'm still wary of his predilection to play it safe, taking neutral positions and employing flavorless rhetoric in an effort to offend as little as possible. the tendency to play the middle road reminds me of the mass media industry's practice of producing homogenized, low-quality, formulaic media fare in the interest of accumulating mass audiences, at the expense of accuracy, progress, and authentic representation. you can spin it as "unification," but it looks more to me like ball-less neutrality, and we all know you can't be neutral on a moving train...
at some point in the debate, Hillary and Barack were bickering and talking over the moderators trying to interject their various points of contention (what else is new? yawn yawn, right?) the camera cut to some slick-looking NBC guy, while Hillary was still talking, as he tried to cut to a commercial break (which would be incidentally filled with campaign commercials), saying "TELEVISION DOESN'T STOP!" indeed, it's apparent now, this spectacle does not stop, not for anyone. even if we want it to. we've got to jump off!
so screw it, i've had it. clearly politics are theatre and this theatre is vaudeville. worse, it's bad television! i've always said a vote for Nader is a wasted vote. so maybe i'll just vote for (*gasp!*) Huckabee. because there is no way in hell our next Chief is going to be called "President Huckabee" (sorry, Mike!)
